Friday Fun! Cooking with Joy: More Sweet Stuff!

We combine some previous ideas and those of local Raw Food Chefs for powerhouse experiments to develop more healthy dessert recipes.

One Devil of an Ice Cream Pie!

OK, it's a day late, but you'll be glad we waited. Obviously, I have a sweet tooth (who doesn't?) and hate trying to live without some kind of treats to satisfy it -- so I either hunt really hard for the good stuff (that not only tastes good but is good for you) or I make it myself. Today, we explore more ways we can use our Homemade Raw Whipped Cream and Rheo H. Blair's idea of healthy and nutritious pudding (featured in our most recent Cooking with Joy article, Shake It!) to create an entirely new and possibly guest-worthy treat (if you don't eat it all yourself first -- which I highly recommend;-).

We made the recent amazing discovery of a dedicated an delicious Raw Food Chef named Keri, whose food is featured at Mother's Markets in the OC. She has returned full force after disappearing for a while to restructure her business and train more people to make her very popular fresh raw foods product line. Two of our favorite foods that she makes is Keri's Raw Fettuccine Alfredo and Keri's Raw Chocolate Pudding. The latter is a featured guest in our recipe corner today. Here are the amazing ingredients in Keri's Raw Chocolate Pudding: Avocado, Cacao Powder, Agave, and Sea Salt. ALL ingredients are Raw, and although this list might seem simple, the taste is anything but. I've never tasted such a convincing HEALTHY Chocolate Pudding. My husband, a litmus test for food around our place, absolutely flipped over this stuff. It's SO rich and wonderful, but its richness led me to seek other things to use it for and with. Here are some of the things I came up with.

First, make a large batch of Raw Whipped Cream, just using the Raw Cream and the Xylitol, whipping with a whisk (no cinnamon this time, unless you want to be really daring). Now, you can just have a taste-treat-partay, with a small portion of the pudding in ratio to a large amount of whipped cream (in a bowl, whipped cream on top, mixed together, or in separate bowls, experimenting back and forth with quantities of pudding and whipped cream on your spoon). However, here's a more interesting idea I had: Devil of a Mud Pie!

The ingredients:

1 small container of Keri's Chocolate Pudding
(or a pudding of your own making based on our Shake It! article)
2 ice-cube trays full of ice cubes made from Raw Milk
Raw Cacao
Xylitol
Raw Cream

The idea:

Take Keri's Chocolate Pudding (or whatever healthy pudding you wish), blend together a couple large tablespoons of it with the Raw Milk ice cubes in a VitaMix or other super blender until it is the consistency of soft-serve ice cream. Mix in some extra xylitol or raw agave for the sake of sweetening the milk ice. When you take it out of the blender, place in a mixing bowl and, using a spatula, swirl in some extra pudding to make it look really convincing as a worthy Mud Pie filling.

If you want a crust, my best suggestion for all us low carb people is to simply take raw cacao beans or pieces, crush and spread on the bottom of your pie shell (if you want it to stick to the sides, spread some raw butter that's been softened a few minutes before adding the cacao).

NOW, take your Mud Pie filling of Raw Pudding, Raw Milk ice cream mix, scoop out into the shell, and place the whole thing in a freezer. While waiting for it to harden a bit more, you can be making copious amounts of plain Raw Whipped Cream with your Raw Cream and Xylitol. When you take your pie out of the freezer, cover with a mound of the whipped cream, and drizzle with the pudding as if it were fudge. Put more "fudge" in a design on the plates, and sprinkle all with more cacao pieces for an extra flare. Amazing! And really good for you! Do you KNOW how much healthy fat is in all this stuff?? Between the Raw Cream and the Avocado, not to mention all the great protein and health benefits of the Raw Milk, and the extra amazing antioxidant power of Raw Cacao, YOU ARE SET. And it is ALL low glycemic and low carb. Enjoy!

Information found on Rheo H. Blair: The Book is meant for educational and informational purposes only, and to motivate you to make your own health care and dietary decisions based upon your own research and in partnership with your health care provider. It should not be relied upon to determine dietary changes, a medical diagnosis or courses of treatment.

Click through the link to read a GREAT collection of articles on issues such as raw milk, fats, soy dangers and others -- all consistent with the philosophy and teachings of Rheo Blair. If he were with us, these are the kinds of articles he would be reading. Educate yourself!